Mania
by our dancing days
Summary: Obsessive love is still love, after all. / Seven pairings. Seven endings. One type of love.


**Title: **Mania

**Pairings: **Albus/Gellert, Bellatrix/Voldemort, Lavender/Anthony, Merope/Tom, Romilda/Harry, Salazar/Rowena and Severus/Lily.

**Summary: **Obsessive love is still love, after all. Seven pairings. Seven endings. One type of love. One-shot.

**Notes:** This has a guaranteed sweet ending for one lucky couple, I promise! It's all (mainly) unrequited love, so don't worry if there's a pairing above that you detest. It probably won't work out anyway. Enjoy!

* * *

Harry Potter is _amazing. _

At least, that's what Romilda Vane thinks. Romilda Vane thinks that Harry is her world, her stars and her moons and her whole fucking_ universe_. He is the "Chosen One", the Boy-Who-Lived, and if it gets better than that, someone had better tell Romilda immediately because she thinks it shouln't be possible.

Of course, Romilda has never exactly been known for being anything other than obnoxious, and therefore draws the conclusion that Harry is most definitely _hers. _

Harry Potter is _brilliant. _

He has black hair - she can imagine the two of them walking in the snow, and the picture is pretty, she has to admit - and green eyes - _Avada Kedavra_, they all murmur at the back of the classroom, where she mutters _emerald_ - and that _smile. _Romilda will happily give over her Beatles collection and make up box just to see that smile.

Plus, Harry plays Quidditch; is the youngest Seeker of the century, even - that makes him pretty damn hot.

Harry Potter is _fantastic._

He's a Gryffindor - like her - but he is almost shy, not as outgoing as her and her group of friends. But he's Gryffindor alright.

And that little blush whenever his fangirls wink at him - Romilda often catches herself wondering _exactly _how far that blush goes... but that will happen in time. Harry is _hers _(she thinks, anyway).

Harry Potter is _incredible. _

He is kind and modest and brave and powerful and cute and shy and he is her opposite (opposites attract, right? So why doesn't he notice her?) so they are perfect. _He _is perfect.

And, yes, Harry Potter may be all those things and more, but Romilda Vane is idiotic, vain, cowardly, weak, haughty and obnoxious and yes, they are opposites, but he _hates _her with a passion, that arrogant little fourth-year with more chest than brain.

Harry Potter is _better. _

* * *

Muggle - WORTHLESS.

But oh, Tom Riddle; isn't he wonderful? Isn't he beautiful - _muggle - _and flawless - _worthless - _and _perfect? _

"I love you Tom," she says loudly, though he doesn't hear her; of course he doesn't, because he is not with her in her empty house with her empty heart and empty eyes. "I promise, I love you."

And Merope smiles - a not very pretty smile, but she's never really been pretty, now, has she?

Gaunt - INSANE.

"Would you like some tea, darling?"

Tom takes a sip, then looks up at her with wide, adoring eyes. "Merope... will you marry me?"

"Of course I will!" She squeals, like a child playing dress up. Her gaze is predatory, watching her new fiancé's every move. She can't let him slip away.

Yes - NO.

"You'll love me, Tom," she whispers, cradling her stomach and leaning over her husband and his closed eyes. "You'll love both of us." She smooths down his hair and smiles her faulty, haunting smile that could have been pretty on a different face.

And Tom's eyes open. He screams. "No - no - Tom, _wait!" _She cries as he runs to the door, disgusted, and she lets him leave, because she's only a Squib after all.

* * *

He watches her.

He watches her love and laugh and live her life without him. _Lily Evans. _Just as beautiful, he thinks, as she was when they were ten. Even more so. _Lily Potter. _Not quite so beautiful, not quite so brilliant.

_Lily Snape. _Not quite so happy, not quite so free. But still beautiful.

_Lily._

Lily is beautiful, and brilliant, and happy, and free, and fierce. She is fiery and open and honest and kind and sweet, and most of all, _alive. _

She ignores him.

She sees him, of course she does. He hovers at the corners where she meets her friends, leans against the opposite side of the tree where she's reading. He watches as Potter begins to become _James, _and hides behind the open doors of the church one Thursday morning that will change her.

It's all very surreal.

_Lily Evans. _She is honest and open and scared and sweet.

_Lily Potter. _She is brilliant and happy and free and fierce, and she's nervous and haunted and being watched...

_Lily Snape._

She is the girl that Lily could've, might've, should've been; she could've been the martyr. She could've been the angel, and people would whisper about her, saying, _"That's the girl who saved Severus Snape." _

_Lily._

Lily is scared and haunted and broken and beautiful. Severus is the same, not that he knows it, because he only has eyes for Lily Evans, the girl she used to be.

* * *

In some ways, they are polar opposites. In most, though, they're too similar.

Both cutting, both passionate, both witty, both cruel. But they are different in the ways that matter. She's emotional, wary, beautiful. He is cold, reckless, marred. She is a Ravenclaw, and he is a Slytherin. She perfects, and he obsesses.

"Why not, Rowena? You will fall for _him, _not even one of us, but you will never let me take this chance?"

"The chance was never yours to take, Salazar," Rowena whispers back solemnly as she walks away, her classic, deep blue robes billowing behind her in some twisted version of a hero's cape.

They always argue. Always fight. Debate over the smallest headlines in the newspaper, the quietest scathing comment they should both be used to by now.

But they've never been as defeated as this.

He loses his life to her, long before they become founders, long before Salazar goes insane, and long before Rowena dies. His heart is hers already, and though you can function without it, you can never function without a soul.

They say Slytherin is the evil house, the cunning house, the sly house, the ambitious house, maybe even the bitter house, after its founder, Salazar.

But, truly, it's just the obsessive house.

* * *

Albus is enthralled.

He knows the feeling - knows it from late night wonderings in the library with his fingers ghosting over the spines of the books in awe, knows it from new spells and charms and hexes and jinxes and discoveries, knows it from the moment the Sorting Hat called out Gryffindor - but it has never been this way before.

It has never been directed towards a person before.

Gellert is handsome and witty and charming, much like younger versions of him that have walked the halls of Hogwarts, paths he's never himself taken, versions both good and bad.

Albus, in his entire life, has only ever seen two people who compare to Gellert Grindelwald.

(Tom Riddle and James Potter, and look how they turned out - dead).

Even when he walks to the marred and broken brown gate of the Potter house at Godric's Hollow, his eyes still flit to the village square where two young, wise boys talk and plan and plot and play and slowly, ever so slowly, fall in love.

"Come on, Albus!" The older one calls, and the other follows obediently, his auburn hair longer and looser than allowed at Hogwarts. They push each other mockingly, as boys do, though the younger's gaze is too adoring, too trusting. The older doesn't notice, never notices, can never notice.

It's the way it's meant to be.

The ghosts of Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald still haunt the place where they planned to become the Masters of Death.

Which is kind of insanely ironic, in a way.

Albus blinks, and stutters, and thinks of the boy he used to be, back when Gellert Grindelwald was enthralling.

* * *

Bellatrix reckons it's the inbreeding that makes them all insane.

I mean, it's not usually that pronounced - a few messed up words, a vague idea to maybe get someone killed, just twitches - but in families like the Blacks, and families like the Gaunts, it becomes a little bit more than that.

It becomes feeling the rush when you make someone's blood boil - literally - and cackling at an idea so absurd no one should be able to think of it, let alone imagine it and create it and bring it to life. It becomes pure, unadulterated _insanity. _

And maybe that's why she's drawn to the Dark Lord, the wonder of a man so like his father (who they don't hear about).

He's evil, no doubt about that, and maybe she wasn't, at first. She read her sisters bedtime stories and wore pretty dresses and cared only for schoolwork and boyfriends. And that image of Bella Black fades.

It doesn't matter that she wasn't evil then; she is now.

She knows about insanity; she lives it, breathes it, loves it. It enfolds her, comforts her, even when there's no one left. It's always there, hovering at the back of her lonely mind. Insanity is always there.

Like Tom Riddle getting out of his orphanage, Bellatrix just has to set it free.

They're perfect together, in a weird, twisted way. Bellatrix is drawn to him, drawn by his power and control and, for lack of a better word, _evilness. _

And Tom Riddle is somewhat captured by her - her twisted innocence, her brutality, her recklessness. She is dangerous and it enthralls him, because her life is almost as tragic is his, and whilst his soul broke, her mind shattered.

Lord Voldemort, the being already half-dead, couldn't care less.

* * *

"Won Won!"

She loves him. He doesn't love her; she's okay with that. He will, in time. They'll live happily ever after and she'll look _dazzling _in her (ever so slightly over-the-top) wedding dress and they'll have beautiful kids with blonde hair and blue eyes that she'll obsess over and they will be the envy of everyone, everywhere and most importantly, he will _love _her...

"Sorry, Lavender," he whispers in the loud, brash way only he can. She whimpers loudly, because dammit, they're one in the same anyway.

"I hate you, Ronald Weasley!"

She hates him. Maybe he hates her as well - maybe she's okay with that. She'll get over him, and he'll die alone because the bookworm will never fall for him. She thinks, anyway.

"Shay!"

She'll get her happily ever after and the most _beautiful, _revealing wedding dress (that she obsesses over for months) and her blonde haired, blue-eyed children, and everyone will say how strong she is, how brave she is, how beautiful...

"Seamus Finnigan, you get back here right _now!" _He turns towards her and suddenly her wedding dress becomes a funeral gown and her beautiful offspring are buried in tiny graves and her smile is suddenly morbid. Where is her innocence? Where is her happily ever after?

"No, Lavender," he says easily, shaking his head in the nonchalant way that Seamus can. She shrugs accordingly, because _hell, _they're not exactly opposites.

"Tony!"

She loves him. She loves all of them. Ron's brashness and temper and loyalty and utter _boyishness_; Seamus' nonchalance and impatience and hilarity and all of his quirks; Anthony, and the way he holds her when she cries and the way he won't give her blonde haired, blue-eyed babies and the fact that _she doesn't care. _

They won't live happily ever after - who does? - but she'll get her modest wedding dress (to cover her scars) and Anthony _does _love her.

"Don't leave us, Anthony!" She shouts and he pauses in the doorway. Ron didn't do that. Neither did Seamus.

He gives a long-suffering sigh, and leans back on her heels. To her surprise, she doesn't cry - she shakes as though she is cold, and she is, _inside, _but she quakes in her shoes and she cradles her blonde haired, brown-eyed son against her chest.

"Okay, Lavender," he murmurs, comforting and honest and sweet. He walks over to her and brushes her dirty blonde hair out of her hazel eyes. "Okay."

Maybe love is the best type of obsession.


End file.
